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Future of Sports Writing

“The future of sports writing? How blogs and the imminent demise of traditional newspapers…”

I don’t think there will be a distinction in a few years. Look at what even our local media’s doing: they all ru Mariner-related blogs. The amount of resources they devote to it vary greatly, but they’re all there. ESPN’s run Neyer and then others as blogs for years with great success. At the same time, papers are seeing their print circulation drop, yes. We’re almost certainly guaranteed to see a one-paper town in Seattle soon, which will be terrible even for sports fans.

We’re going to be at a place soon where the beat reporters and columnists compete with the bloggers almost entirely online, where the daily subscriber count that matters will be RSS and not inked papers tossed on porches (or yards/driveways/so on). The King County Journal’s went this way already — they’re essentially a well-funded, employs-a-ton-of-people blog with a content manager, splintered into community sites and tiny near-pamphlet papers.

Here, this means the M’s will continue to pick and choose the electronic coverage from the press box based on their favor. The Times beat writer has a print column and a blog? Here’s your pass. The Tacoma beat writer has a print column and a blog? Watch from the seats. Everett Herald? In. USSM has a blog read by more people than the Herald’s outlets combined? Out. Some boot-licking blog? In. We see this now: when MLB put out a policy on electronic media, teams needed to give creds to ESPN.com, CBS Sportsline, and MLB.com, and that was it. That’s where the M’s drew the line. I got a press pass once when I was writing for Baseball Prospectus where I had to promise that anything I saw or learned would only be used for the annual, and wouldn’t go out on the website. If you work for a newspaper, you don’t have to make that promise.

That’s not true with other franchises, where teams wave in quality and blogs, do interviews with them, and look at that as an opportunity to reach out to fans that may not be listening if they do 10m on the morning sports talk show, and so on. The M’s aren’t that team, and they’re in good company.

This draws an artificial distinction in which the press pass is a license to print money in many ways. If I can’t go ask Riggleman to talk about his bunting strategy, you can’t get that post here. But you can get a ton of player and manager quotes where the M’s deign to grant access, and that makes those places more popular, and in turn (whether recipients like to admit this or not) the more restricted the passes are, the more it gives the M’s leverage over the outlets granted passes.

It also entirely destroys that category of story, which is unfortunate. One of the great current advantages of blogs over print coverage is that we’re free to explore topics in a level of depth a print reporter can’t today and has not incentive to in today’s environment. A beat reporter’s life right now is being beat up by the schedule, trying to turn around game stories and other notebook content. It’s pretty easy to see where both of those get wiped by a future without print deadlines, of course. But they’re already busy enough without having to take time to research injury rates for minor league prospects over the course of an entire season to try and find out if their team has a real problem.

When we write the bunting strategy, there’s no quote from Riggleman on the subject that doesn’t come from a game story or other content written up by people with no interest in the bunting strategy question, and those quotes end up being without a larger context that might be the most enlightening thing we discuss all year.

I’m not sure that’s worth the price, though, for two reasons. If you read Tracy Kidder, who wrote Soul of a New Machine, House, you may note that in the books, the point of view is far, far more sympathetic to certain parties than others, and you realize it’s because Kidder spent weeks on house-building, so those guys come off with their point of view fully explained. Similarly, repeatedly this season we’ve seen that access can reduce the amount of truth in an article.

Moreover, though, if the only thing that distinguishes a credentialed reporter from the hordes of bloggers is the access they have to get player and manager quotes, then they’re much less likely to endanger their livelihood by angering the players who’ll talk to them, much less the team. It doesn’t even have to be a conscious choice. If there’s a player who talks to a writer all the time and sucks horribly, they’re going to get a lot longer to turn it around before being torn into compared to a sullen kid who skips interviews. Beyond which, it’s human — who wants to walk into a locker room filled with people who hate them?

All of this is multiplied by who writes the checks. A beat reporter for a paper writes a nearly-daily game story, some additional content, and every two weeks has a check cut from their publisher, while Dave and I make some fraction of that amount by people hitting a Paypal button and sending us a couple of bucks (or dropping us a line with an extra ticket, or buying me a beer when we run into each other pre-game). As a result, we’re fitting writing around everything else in our lives, researching the things that interest us, knowing that for the most part, the comparatively fractional reward we receive is a direct validation of what we’re working on.

Right now, that imbalance means that there’s a vast swath of content you need to go off-paper for. If you want to read about how Ibanez sucks, or some serious analysis into in-game strategy, you have to go to the blogs. If you want a seriously considered lament about the state of the franchise, you have to go to the blogs.

And this is all dwarfed by the power of the television behemoth. Pre-and-post-game analysis of wretched quality, unparalleled access to players and coaches, and the broadcast crew which can entirely dominate the way everyone who follows the team talks about it. I’d love for there to be alternate broadcast tracks out of FSN control, but that’s never, ever going to happen under current licensing terms. The power of all the beat reporters pales in comparison to that crew in painting the perception of the game, the players, on up through the whole organization. We’re all small bugs playing in their shadow.

I don’t see that changing. The market for people who want to read game stories and box scores is a lot less lucrative than the broadcast itself. The market for a long discussion of in-game strategy is a lot more limited than I’d like it to be. I don’t know if it’s large enough to sustain full-time writers in the best of circumstances, and I’ll skip the USSM viability question here.

At the same time, we see the lines blurring. Geoff Baker’s blog contains video snippets, random photos, and other content that you don’t see in a traditional beat column, the kind of thing that’s taking the press pass and using it to expand coverage — which, to circle back around, is exactly the kind of thing the M’s press office won’t allow people who aren’t Geoff Baker to do, which in turn makes it even more unique and interesting. But there’s no way to look at that kind of work and say that Baker’s strictly a print reporter any more.

I don’t think things will change in Seattle in the coming years unless there’s an ownership shakeup that results in tech-saavy people gaining control and changing policy. But in other places, there’s a very real chance that the average fan will get to pick the flavor of coverage that most suits them, and it won’t be a choice between the traditional coverage of the papers and the no-access outsider analysis of blogs, it’ll be between dozens of smaller, non-professional outlets and a few well-equipped and probably personality-based outfits offering multimedia coverage, some of which will rise from the masses and others representative of more traditional media outlets.

I’m looking forward to the chaos.

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This post was written as one of the requests by a USSM supporter as part of Thank You Content Week. Join them!

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Comments

27 Responses to “Future of Sports Writing”

Dobbs on
August 30th, 2008 4:35 pm

Well the Mariner’s lose out by not having you guys there. My main source of following the M’s is this website, not watching games (and not just because they suck) or reading a beat reporter’s blog.

If they don’t tap sites like this, then they’re going to lose out on the contingent of fans who want to be well-educated and don’t want to bother with the garbage we’re getting elsewhere.

Their loss.

msb on
August 30th, 2008 5:02 pm

The Tacoma beat writer has a print column and a blog? Watch from the seats.

Divish? I can’t imagine they don’t seat Larue in the booth …

msb on
August 30th, 2008 5:25 pm

it has always amazed me how petty all teams are about issuing press passes– goodness knows, it’s not like all the seats up there in the press booth are filled to capacity each night.

Weâ€™re going to be at a place soon where the beat reporters and columnists compete with the bloggers almost entirely online, where the daily subscriber count that matters will be RSS and not inked papers tossed on porches (or yards/driveways/so on).

well, Jay Mariotti thinks the newspaper is dead.

of course, he arrived at that decision after getting a new (some say $1/2M) newspaper contract and a free trip to China to cover the Olympics for the Sun Times. It was there he noticed (apparently for the first time) that news went out faster online than in print.

Of course, some say that perhaps there were other reasons he quit. Via email. Without giving notice.

msb on
August 30th, 2008 5:34 pm

Thatâ€™s not true with other franchises, where teams wave in quality and blogs, do interviews with them, and look at that as an opportunity to reach out to fans

this is one of the things that has been most interesting over the season; seeing GMs and owners reach out to fans by means other than poorly written letters to the season ticket holders, or 15 minutes for a Q&A at a Fanfest.

Do you think it really would take an ownership change, rather than just a GM change?

When Bavasi would come talk to USSM gatherings, and he would ask to keep what he said in-house, was it so that he could talk more freely, or did he ask to keep it in-house because he knew it wasn’t something that Choward would likely be unhappy with?

mln on
August 30th, 2008 6:01 pm

I always wanted to see some newspaper try the monkey at a typewriter experiment.

Put a monkey at a typewriter or computer keyboard. Come back a few hours later and see what kind of writing it has cranked out.

It might be better than some of the tripe that passes for sports journalism.

terry on
August 30th, 2008 6:06 pm

At first, I quit reading newsprint in favor of the internet. Then I slowly fell out of the habit of reading sports-related content from the mlb.com, espn.com, and the “Seattle Times” of the world. Now I basically avoid that kind of content like the plague.

confess on
August 30th, 2008 6:39 pm

I wonder though. If press credentials are released to blogs and such, wouldn’t they then be bound by the same types of restraints as traditional media, and unable to explore themes as freely as they do now?

gwangung on
August 30th, 2008 6:42 pm

I wonder though. If press credentials are released to blogs and such, wouldnâ€™t they then be bound by the same types of restraints as traditional media, and unable to explore themes as freely as they do now?

What other MLB sites regularly treat blogs with any semblance of respect and credibility? I remember seeing a few Billy Bean exclusive Q and A sessions on an Oakland blog, but I’d be curious to go dig through the archives of another blog-friendly team.

I can understand the reasoning of constant fluff articles in the daily news, but for the most part I’m amazed that people still read them. I remember a time when the Sports page was the only section I’d give the time of day to. Now? It’s like staying glued to ESPNews all day – there’s just no point. You turn the TV off or close the paper and realize you just wasted 15 minute of your life. For the most part, there’s little or no return on your investment.

Yet even if you want to argue that the majority of sports fans need a daily fix, I’d ask if they know how to use an RSS reader. I’ve got probably 8 or 9 sports blogs (ranging from USSM to the ever enjoyable FJM) and that’s enough to guarantee I’ll have at least two or three fun reads every day.

I think you’re remembering Paul DePodesta, one of the Padres front office guys, writing on his own blog. Which is totally awesome.

enazario on
August 30th, 2008 8:53 pm

MLB and the Seattle Mariners are no different than most private enterprises. All things being equal, they only tolerate press because it benefits them as a way to promote their product. They also try to spin and control the stories written about their product.

MLB is probably the most traditional and conservative of all sports. They just embraced instant replay -and its 2008! When TV came along MLB resisted -foolishly- until they realized it benefited them.

They will resist blogs and bloggers until they have an audience that rivals TV and print media. They will embrace bloggers too in due time. This will be good and bad because -let’s face it- the Internet provides a bullhorn to idiots who have no business having a bullhorn. Alas, for better or worse, that is the ethos of the Internet.

In the meantime, those of us who know better will continue to enjoy the fine work at USSMariner. And we will remember how in the beginning it was run by two rebels who spoke truth to power.

Breadbaker on
August 30th, 2008 9:45 pm

The M’s attitude is consistent. They care about the marginal fan, not the rabid one. The rabid fans are the ones reading this blog and those like it. The casual fan believes Rizzs when he talks about how the team misses Willie Bloomquist.

JMHawkins on
August 30th, 2008 11:34 pm

Derek, thanks! That’s some fast service. I kinda figured this might be a topic about which you’d have something to say worth saying.

whwang on
August 31st, 2008 12:13 am

After I hit “donate” under this article, a page says “We were unable to decrypt the certificate id.” Something is wrong? The one in the upper left of the site still works.

I was surprised, almost appalled, to read on the Seattle Times blog that Geoff Baker was not sent to Cleveland for budgetary reasons. Print media is hurting.

gwangung on
August 31st, 2008 9:17 am

The Mâ€™s attitude is consistent. They care about the marginal fan, not the rabid one.

That’s not an irrational position. It’s even a good one if there’s someone competent at the baseball end of things.

Larry Stone supports the Mariners hiring of Kim Ng for GM.

Hm. Makes me think if there’s any kind of collective behavior synergies in independent blogs and mainstream sources in the future, when they agree on chocies or disagree…

msb on
August 31st, 2008 9:24 am

And this is all dwarfed by the power of the television behemoth. Pre-and-post-game analysis of wretched quality

not just television– just now we are getting to experience radio pre- & post where the one person who did know what was going on is fired, and the journeyman (can you be a journeyman at 27 or so?) sports guy instead handles the chores, and displays a remarkable lack of interest in anything beyond the traditional methods of measuring players and game results.

msb on
August 31st, 2008 9:30 am

I was surprised, almost appalled, to read on the Seattle Times blog that Geoff Baker was not sent to Cleveland for budgetary reasons. Print media is hurting.

he’s had a lot of days this season when he hasn’t covered the team, due to the Times’ cost-cutting measures — for the most part, that is why Stone & others have done the blog & game reports on some home games.

<blockquote.I was surprised, almost appalled, to read on the Seattle Times blog that Geoff Baker was not sent to Cleveland for budgetary reasons. Print media is hurting.

The Times/PI is certainly hurting. They’ve cut staff over the last few months, and people I know who work there have put in considerable OT to cover all the work. I didn’t think, however, that their budget would squeeze to the point where they wouldn’t even send their beat writers on road games to save money.

msb on
August 31st, 2008 12:56 pm

if the Ms were winning, though, would they be pinching pennies with Baker’s time … it might be the same reasoning that led to Drayer’s release.

Dave Hall on
August 31st, 2008 5:37 pm

As a faithful reader of USSM, as well as other sports blogs such as With Leather, and especially Shannon Drayer’s (damn you, KOMO Radio!), I find insights here that are generally missing from the print media counterparts. Larry Larue used to provide a lot more meat in his articles, which I miss from his current product.

What makes USSM most valuable to me as a Mariners fan are the (generally) thoughtful comments that expand on the blog-masters’ articles. As a result of reading all of your comments, I’m a much better informed baseball consumer, and enjoy watching MLB games that much more. Compared to the print media-sponsored Mariners blogs, y’all are like “Meet the Press”. (And I mean that in a good way.) Given this blog’s credibility and assumed readership, would there be any benefit to lobbying your fellow journalists to sponsor your press credentials? The concept might be risky, as I gather the Mariners administration plays favorites with the media, but it seems like the sponsoring organization would gain serious “street cred” and USSM would have equal access, thereby making a great blog even more outstanding.

I don’t know, guys… to me, one of the things that sets endeavors like Baseball Prospectus and analysis blogs like USSM apart is that you *don’t* have all that access and that helps you to tell it like it is. Press access is a double-edged sword. Even if the Mariners just blindly gave it to you all of the sudden and didn’t sound like they were going to restrict it the first time you posted a critical blog, the access itself might affect the way the whole thing’s written. Like, what if you met Rick Rizzs and found him to be super duper awesome as a person? That could possibly have the effect of having you not look on him as the most boring announcer in the history of boring things, which is a nice sentiment to have if you’re in the press box but doesn’t really mean much to the general public whose only access to Rizzs is what they hear from him on the air.

I guess what I’m saying is that inside-y access-filled media content is one way of doing things but USSM to me is more about outside-y content. Because it’s simply not possible to fill a day with your own interview with Ryan Rowland-Smith, you has in-depth analysis of his ability as a player instead. Or you post pictures of bees, which is basically the same thing.